I went on a Twitter rant yesterday because I’d finished Isabel Wilkerson’s phenomenal The Warmth Of Other Suns. The book is a narrative history of the Great Migration through the eyes of actual migrants. Several points stick out for me.

1) The Great Migration was not an influx of illiterate, bedraggled, lazy have-nots. Wilkerson marshalls a wealth of social science data showing that the migrants were generally better educated than their Northern brethren, more likely to stay married, and more likely to stay employed. In fact, in some cases, black migrants were better educated than their Northern white neighbors.

2) In this sense, the migrants to Northern cities resembled immigrant classes to whom black people in these same cities are often unfavorably compared to. There’s a quote in Wilkerson’s book which I can’t find where a supervisor basically says that blacks are the favored workers because they will work hard at the worst jobs for relatively little money. You would have thought the guy was talking about Hispanic farm-hands today.

3) The black migrants were not immigrants. They were citizens of this country who did not enjoy its full protection. Unlike other immigrant classes, blacks were never able to cash in on their hard work and middle-class values. For all of their work-ethic, education-valuing, and long-term marriages, they received the worst wages in the worst jobs, were limited to the worst housing, and stuffed in the worst schools.

[…]

6) America does not really want a black middle class. Some of the most bracing portions of Wilkerson’s book involve the vicious attacks on black ambition. When a black family in Chicago saves up enough to move out of the crowded slums into Cicero, the neighborhood riots. The father had saved for years for a piano for his kids. The people of Cicero tossed the piano out the window, looted his home, torched his apartment and then torched his building. In the South, when black people attempted to leave to earn better wages, they were often forcibly detained, and thus kept in slavery as late as the 1950s.

On a policy level, there is a persistent strain wherein efforts to aid The People are engineered in such a way wherein they help black people a lot less. It is utterly painful to read about the New Deal being left in the hands of Southern governments which were hostile to black people, and then to today see a significant chunk of health care, again, left in the hands of Southern governments which are hostile to black people. At this point, such efforts no longer require open bigotry. They are simply built into the system.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010) is a historical study by African-American author Isabel Wilkerson.[1][2] It is about the The Great Migration and the Second Great Migration, the movement of blacks out of the Southern United States to the Midwest, Northeast and West between 1915 and 1970.[1][2] The book intertwines a general history and statistical analysis of the entire period, and the biographies of three persons: a sharecropper’s wife who left Mississippi in the 1930s for Chicago, named Ida Mae Brandon Gladney; an agricultural worker, George Swanson Starling, who left Florida for New York City in the 1940s; and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, a doctor who left Louisiana in the early 1950s, for Los Angeles.

As you can see, we are really talking about two great migrations, both of which were triggered by wars, the mechanization of southern agriculture and northern/western industrialization.

Now a little point-by-point rebuttal:

1. Which “Northern brethren” is Mr. Coates referring to? The White Anglo-Saxon Protestants? The Irish Catholics? The Italians? The White Russians? The Jewish? The Poles? The Hungarians? The Germans? During the same period that 6 million blacks moved north and west there were also tens of millions of immigrants flooding into those same areas from all over the world.

2. If blacks were the favored workers then what happened? Did those greedy, rich, white factory owners prefer paying higher wages to inferior employees because of racism?

3. Yes, black people got a raw deal in this country for most of our history. I don’t want to seem flippant about slavery and Jim Crow segregation but lots of groups have been mistreated throughout history. At some point there needs to be a statute of limitation on historic grievances.

6. Isn’t Cicero a suburb of blue/Democratic/unionized Chicago? Last I checked Chicago was in Illinois, and even southern Illinois is north of the Mason-Dixon line. So exactly who is to blame here?

I’m not quite sure how the idea that black people weren’t allowed to leave the south fits with the “great migration” concept.

As for those New Deal Southern governments, they were all Democrats. In regard to the current implementation of health care, is there some documentation that the quality of healthcare in the South is racially discriminatory? Seriously – that’s a really troubling assertion, especially if it’s true. Where is the evidence?

The fact is that Touré/Ta-Nehisi is a bigot. He doesn’t care about facts or evidence. All he cares about his irrational hatred of white people. He will grab a hold of anything that supports his bigoted views and ignore anything that doesn’t.

53 Responses to You Can’t Argue With A Bigot

A new, erotic novel being described as “fan fiction,” which features the first couple as protagonists-in-chief, is now on sale.

Surely American literature has reached new heights with the publication of GuestHouse Games, in which Barack and Michelle Obama, “alone in their isolated beachfront guesthouse in the tropical paradise of Kailua, Hawaii,” are “drawn into the ancient Hawaiian spiritual world and into the exploration of their own deepest and most forbidden desires.”

Hilarious — most are (although most aren’t fit for a family blog — AoS is R rated for those who may be unaware & it tipping into X territory right now) but one of the ‘clean” ones that hit it on the head:

277 Seriously-Why would anyone with “affection” for the Obama’s write an erotic novel about them?

Probably started as a Kos spank diary, then they realized they could monetize it.

The mere possibility several (many?) million supporters might be intensely interested in this weirdness speaks to the impending demise of what could have been a great republic. Apparently not all adults ARE qualified to vote.

You are so spot on you must be a racist. There’s no other possible explanation. Eric Hoffer once offered up with a brilliant, long-term strategy for unemployed blacks to turn things around but was hooted down by “professional blacks” like the two well known “rev-runds” and their ilk because he was white and the process he suggested involved actual, you know, work!

Surely American literature has reached new heights with the publication of GuestHouse Games, in which Barack and Michelle Obama, “alone in their isolated beachfront guesthouse in the tropical paradise of Kailua, Hawaii,” are “drawn into the ancient Hawaiian spiritual world and into the exploration of their own deepest and most forbidden desires.”

Is Reggie Love in this?

I don’t even know what that means.

(Yes I do.)</i

…

uStarNovels, the publisher of this pioneering work, describes itself as a purveyor of “specially crafted original erotica and erotic romance” featuring “characters that are relatable for everyone” and “experiences that are credible.” Chris Matthews, brace yourself for more thrills up your leg.

Here are some other characters who might get a turn on the President’s Staff:

Kenji, the guesthouse’s young Hawaiian gardener with whom the leading lady feels an intense erotic connection. He is involved in one of the sex scenes with the couple.

Leah and Stellan, an attractive and exotic couple who own the local store. Their ties to the islands are far deeper than just business and they will play a significant role in the leading couple’s search for the truth about the mystery and about themselves. They are involved in sex scenes with the couple.

Marisol Ramirez, the woman who runs the guesthouse and has left the leading couple in charge during her vacation.

Tingles up his leg today was saying this inauguration had more people in the crowd than any event in history, and more people watched than anything in history. He’s so crazy, crazy puts on a disguise and hides.

Look, the elitist north-easterners pretty much screwed over everyone in sight in the beginning of US history. They took the native Americans land and turned some of them into slaves, of course many of the native groups held slaves also. They used bio warfare on Native populations (smallpox, measles). The imported Scotch prisoners of war like a commodity, against their will and sold them into indenture for longer than their life expectancy. And they also brought black people over to use as slaves. It’s all pretty disgusting. I am a descendant of indentured Scots who were brought here against their will. So don’t start the crap about what “the white people did”. There were different classes of white people and only one class owes the descendants of black slaves. This same group also owes me, the descendant of an indentured man. But I’m not holding my breath for compensation to come, I’m making the best of my situation. If the government would just leave me alone I would be really happy.

Constance what you said is SO true and tragically the vast majority of our population has no idea about our true history. Our educational system has been used to push an agenda, the truth be damned.

IMO there needs to be a statute of limitations as Myiq suggests, enough already. As an example tracing my ancestors back I in fact did have slave owners on my father’s father’s side. However on my father’s mother’s side, as well as on my mother’s side you find native American and Scots that were enslaved or indentured servants. So things get complicated…….do I owe myself due to the 1/4? How about one quarter pays for one quarter and I get 20 acres and half a mule???

Why is it that blacks whose family immigrated here long after any slavery are somehow more entitled to grievance than you or I? This is all driven by politics that’s why. I’m not trying to diminish or belittle any of the bondage in our nation’s past, but at some point you just have to get over it and move on. People of every ethnicity have been enslaved at some point or another throughout the history of the earth.

Absolutely. What your great grandpa did to my great grandpa or vice versa is not a reason for us to be flinging stones at each other.
Blood feuds are ridiculous; even more so when we don’t even have specifics we can point to on ancestry.com and just assume ancient grievances based on current skin color.
I’m pretty sure that 2 generations back my maternal & paternal ancestors were on opposite sides of both world wars; didn’t stop them from eventually begetting me.

My ancestors escaped the Irish Potato Famine and some dictator in Italy. I like to joke they based the movie Gangs of New York on them. No wonder they gave birth to the greatest generation. Rough starts for all.

Cheese and Rice on burnt toast!
When are these people going to get over themselves? professional race baters the lot of them. Especially the Sharpton, Jackson, Toure crowd.
And REAL people, like Bill Cosby, who tell the truth- get shouted down and worse.

I am half Jewish , and half Italian . Can we talk?
My grandmother on the Italian side was tricked /forced into marrying a man 20 years older while she was still in Italy . She was invited to a neighbors , and kept by force in the home of this man overnight , which required that she marry him ; and didn’t really get free until she came to the states . So let’s add another level to all of the oppression by including women .

Why is when blacks work hard and have good values and want the best for their families just like every other race, they are called ” Uncle Toms” by other blacks?. Why do they want to hold their own back and can not be happy to see them succeed?

It’s not the white man’s fault and you’re not from Africa ….. now pull your pants up !

Cosby’s been slammed over and over for trying to improve lives rather than keep them on the plantation. It’s the Jessie Jackson’s and Al Sharpton’s and the new generation Nebletts who are racist SOBs and they need to shut up.